Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
Dragonflies have started to appear - as usual the most numerous Hawker Dragonfly visitor is the
Migrant Hawker - at the moment we are only seeing females.
This Migrant Hawker Dragonfly at last stops long enough to get a detailed pic.
The term Migrant has been rendered inaccurate by global warming allowing
this species to breed in the UK, and at increasingly northern sites.
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Not still for long - here she is out on the hunt. Dragonflies are strictly carnivorous, eating mostly what we would call Midges.
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The bottom right image is a 3x zoom of the second from the top right.
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Dragonflies are superb flyers - fast, but even more impressive is manoeuvrability. Photographing them in flight is tricky, but sometimes catches lighting fast turns. In this image this Migrant Hawker Dragonfly has completely reversed direction in just 0.2 seconds.
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Its 4 a.m., and will start to get light soon, as this young Fox hunts their way across the Meadow site.
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A most bizarre moment we have caught for a while.
During one day we caught 4 rodents in the indoor traps - it's normally more like one-a-day -
and decided to put them all on the tree-stump at 2 p.m. expecting Magpies
to quickly take the lot. But the only visitor in the same afternoon was a Wood Pigeon showing
their usual disinterest in Carrion.
It wasn't until morning at 6.30 a.m. that this Fox, undoubtedly attracted by the developing
bouquet of decomposing mouse, that they seems to have actually climbed up the metre high
stump to reach the feast.
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The trail-cam at the Round Pond Dish of mud caught several minutes of two foxes having a bit of a fight / play / whatever. Most of the pics are so movement blurred its hard to see what is going on, so we picked these three moments to montage together. The order is Top right, bottom right and left. At this time of year mating behaviour is long past with months to come, so we assume that this is a couple of growing youngsters deciding the hierarchy.
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On their way home after a night of hunting, these two foxes share the water dish at Duck Pond. The dish 'loses' about 2 litres of water in this way each night.
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The adult male Green Woodpecker stands on the log across the meadow site, looking his normal magnificence.
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Beak wide open, this male Blackbird may be calling, or panting in the hot sun.
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25 minutes latter we catch this male Blackbird drenched from the bath.
Another male Blackbird is approaching from the rear - maybe to have his
turn in the bath. Birds seem to wait for access for water with no signs of aggression.
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The Red Kites are also exploring the harvested fields for easier to find Rodents and maybe small Rabbits. The Corvids don't approve of any incursion on their territory even 6 months away from the breeding season.
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Here the wind isn't providing much lift, and a bit of wing flapping is called for.
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We are ridiculously enjoying the Green Woodpeckers this year. All previous years sightings have been sparse - this year we get several pics from the automatic camera most days. They are mostly active birds, as you see from this extract from a 12 minute stay on the Meadow Post.
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Presumably Dad green Woodpecker and 'his' sprog.
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The male Green Woodpecker (left) and 2 Juveniles probably taking it in turns to enjoy the sunken water bowl. The about 2 litre bowl gets almost emptied every few daylight hours - and even old Pyrex cookware doesn't 'leak'!
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A female Ruddy Darter Dragonfly stopped for a moment.
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Brown Hawker Dragonflies are quickly distinguished in flight by their overall brown appearance.
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The Beautiful Demoiselles have stayed around longer than in most years. This a male with the four tinted wings so perfectly aligned they look almost black.
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The Green Woodpecker 'family' sharing water from the Duck Pond dish. Dad is on the left. The female Woodpecker has not been around since before nesting - maybe she likes somewhere else better, or she has succumbed to one of the many pressures on wildlife.
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Green Woodpecker Juvenile and adult male make a rather attractive juxtaposition at the submerged water bowl.
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Green Woodpeckers are far more often heard from inside the leaf canopy than seen, But this juvenile flew to this sloping tree-trunk (part of a bifurcate) and stayed long enough to capture this pic.
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Maybe 150m away we see an adult (top) and juvenile Green Woodpecker on one of the huge posts supporting the 11kV power cables. The upper bird is a male (clear at larger image size than makes sense on the WWW) so this may be the same pair frequenting our site.
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In 14 minutes on this very still night this Tawny Owl made 3 landings on the Meadow Post. With no wind there is no preferred direction of landing, and the other two were strictly back-to-camera
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We thought that the little Owl had 'come and gone' so this one off visit was a nice surprise. It may or not be the same bird that we saw before.
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A healthy young fox out and about at 3 a.m.
Seeing the black patch on the tail more clearly than usual, we decided to find find out it's purpose,
if any. From a mixture of an AI and web sites:-
The dark patch on the top of a Red fox's tail marks the location
of the supracaudal gland, aka the violet gland.
It consists of a cluster of modified sebaceous and scent glands
and sits roughly one-third of the way down the tail.
The gland produces an oily, musky-smelling secretion that foxes
use for identification, communication, and scent-marking their
territory. Because it is continuously active and excretes oils,
the secretions stain the overlying hair, creating a distinctive
dark or bare-looking patch.
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This Fox started squatting, moved over to grooming, before reverting to watch and wait mode.
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A young Fox climbs out of the dry ditch by the south hedge gap (right) and settles to a thorough groom.
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The young Fox looks like he owns the place.
In a way he and all the wildlife do.
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We see Badgers all over the site in Trail-cams, only occasionally at the high-resolution colour sites. Whether they mostly dislike the flash or the clicking from the camera we don't know.
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Daytime finds evidence of the Badger visits in the way of latrines. They seem to choose a patch, use it for a week or two making multiple scrapes before moving elsewhere. This particular heap of dung is dominated by half digested corn seeds. The fields on 2 sides contain ripening corn so it is pretty obvious where the Badgers have been feasting. Walking along the Farm Road we often witness Grey Squirrels stampeding from the corn field across the road and into our patch, mouth crammed full with seed heads.
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The Long Mound outside our south boarder seems to be attracting Hares rather better than the original flat grass. Here one sees us arrive and decide it is time for a leisurely departure down the north slope and through the hedge into our patch where we didn't find it again. Each frame here is at about half-second intervals.
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The original sequence was photographed at 10 fps. Here shifting along are 3 consecutive frames. The one on the right here is the third from the left in the longer montage.
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